Prologue
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Summary: Carolyn Barek has a decision to make. A new partner's not an easy choice, especially if it's the NYPD's black sheep.


_**Standard Disclaimer: **The Law & Order universe is the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. I borrow them for my own amusement only._

_**Author's Note:** I suck at summaries. Also, I am apparently obsessed with beginnings. This is possibly because I'm a new writer, so everything's still first time for me. Feedback and constructive criticism more than welcome._

* * *

The file is a tumor on Deakins' desk, a malignancy of paper and ink. "He's got a reputation," the Captain says, as though it should be news to her. "I'm not saying he hasn't earned some of it."

"I've heard stories," she says.

"You and the rest of New York." He passes a baseball between his hands, right, left, right, left, relaxing in the repetition. "He's had some bad luck, but he's a good cop."

"Mike Logan." There is a morbid fascination in saying the name, in trying to repeat it without the attendant weight of legend and disaster. She studies the thickness of the file on Deakins' desk and wonders about its contents. Partners. Strikes. Citations. Psych profiles.

"I won't lie to you," he says. "Trouble follows him around. The brass doesn't love him. It could be rough on your promotion chances, if you were thinking about Sergeant. But he's sharp, and he's good, and he's wasted out in Staten Island. I wouldn't bring him in if I didn't think he'd fit."

Small comfort. Careful though he is in other respects, when it comes to personnel decisions, the Captain has a gambler's willingness to play the long odds. She glances out through the glass door to where Bobby and Alex sit, the one earnest in monologue, the other waiting patiently on the phone.

His gaze follows hers. A small, tired smile twists his mouth. "Just think about it," he says. "God knows you do good work on your own, but there's a reason cops have partners."

She looks at him.

"Fresh starts," Deakins says. He opens a drawer and drops the file into it. Its landing is thunderous. "You two could be a good team."

He is convincing, but then, he always is. She isn't sure which one of them he's trying to reassure.

The squad room is, of a rarity, fairly quiet; most of the shift is out in the field, leaving behind those chained to their phones or the bureaucracy of the law. The air conditioning is pushed to high through some fickle, mechanical quirk, and the chill bites through her blouse to gnaw at her skin.

Bobby's hands are gesturing without the accompaniment of his voice, conducting the tail end of some point that requires no sound. "Yes," Alex says into her handset. "This is Detective Eames from the-- if you could just-- yes, I'll hold." She covers the mouthpiece with her hand and grimaces across her desk. "I'm listening to Yanni," she tells her partner.

"PBS called him the future of classical music," Bobby says.

"Don't look at me. I only watched PBS for Oscar the Grouch," Alex says, and looks up to watch Carolyn's approach. "Well?"

"He wanted to talk about Mike Logan," Carolyn answers, and is rewarded by a curious look on Bobby's part, and an interested one on Alex's.

"I was wondering when that'd happen," the other woman says. "He's coming on?"

"Next week."

"Captain must have done some fast talking to pull that one off."

Carolyn turns her palm up and shrugs: acknowledgment without comment.

"And he's partnering you up?" Alex asks.

"He wants me to think about it."

"You should give it a shot." Her glance at Bobby is bright with exasperated humor. "Nothing like a good partner to make your easy listening choices for you."

Bobby tells Carolyn with childlike gravity, "Yanni." One of his hands drifts, floating like an untethered banner over his own phone. "She prefers Kenny G."

"It's the hair," Alex tells her, as solemn as he is. "There's just something about a man with ringlets."

It is plain enough what Alex's opinion is regarding the possible partnership. Bobby's thoughts are harder to read. His eyes flicker back and forth between the two women, following the ping-pong of voices with the distracted abstraction of an indifferent spectator.

"Mike Logan. He's--" Bobby begins, stops, then finishes, "--good. Good." It is plainly not what he was first intending to say. He plants his elbow on his desk and leans across it to furrow his brow at them. "Did you know the Captain would ask her?" he asks Alex.

"You didn't?" Alex counters, abruptly smug. One-upmanship is a neverending delight for Robert Goren's partner. "--Yes," she adds into the telephone. "I'm still on hold. Detective Eames, from the NYPD. If you could just--"

Carolyn settles herself against a neighboring desk and turns her attention to Bobby. The man simply sits and stares at empty space, eyes blank, face vacant. "You worked with him," she says.

It takes a moment for Bobby to return from the fugue state of his thoughts. She watches as intelligence seeps back to fill the wide, bulky shell of his body, reanimating it for a dark-eyed blink back. "Logan," he says, picking up the thread of conversation again. "He was interesting."

She has only the slightest recollection of the man from his first visit to Deakins, a fleeting impression of irritation and aggressive masculinity. "'Interesting' is a broad word."

"He's very--" he stops again. "Tenacious," he decides.

"Tenacity is part of the job description."

"As a person. The-- he's not quite what he looks like." As though to demonstrate the disparity between appearance and reality, he sags in his chair, tilting his head back to stare glassily at the ceiling.

"--try looking under 'S,'" Alex tells the phone, encouraging. "For 'Smith.' No, that'd be the first letter, last name. It comes after 'R' in the alphabet--"

"He doesn't have a reputation for being easy to work with," Carolyn says, to the original _enfant terrible_.

Bobby straightens to fold his hands in a broad-palmed prayer. He rests his chin on his thumbs, quizzical around the barrier of his fingers. Awareness of irony crimps his mouth. "By whose standards?" he asks her, and succeeds in his quixotic way to look both utterly innocent and utterly knowing. The suggestion of things not kosher are hinted at in the placid eyes. "He was-- he's a good man to have at your back."

"In the prison."

He mumbles something inarticulate against his knuckles. She waits for him.

"Things got ... interesting," he answers at last, and self-consciously hides his mouth behind his hands. He is a born storyteller, but not of his own stories.

"Yes. Terry Smith, with an S. Thank you," Alex says, and returns to their conversation with a hand over the mouthpiece and a dry-voiced, "Cooperation between civil servants. One of the perks of working for the Man. If I can work with the great Shamu, you can work with Mike Logan. At least he'll never talk for two hours about the evolutionary history of the dolphin."

"Manatee," Bobby says, and rouses a little. "It-- not dolphins. It was manatees."

Alex tells Carolyn, deadpan, "He doesn't like dolphins. They smile too much."

Bobby grins briefly and plucks at the books piled high on his desk. "Logan likes baseball," he volunteers.

"He likes other things, too," Alex says. "I've heard rumors."

"He's been on Staten Island a long time," Carolyn observes quietly, and thinks a little about edges rubbed dull, of infamous tempers thwarted by frustration. Bobby understands her, but then, he is skilled at reading the silence between words.

"His-- he controls his temper. Even when it's tempting," he says, and unfocuses into mid-air. "I watched him do it. It's important to him, his self-control and his integrity. And justice. He has a passion for justice." The chameleon face grows absorbed, attention fixed on the absent man. "It bothered him that he never suspected his girlfriend was hiding something."

"That's hardly new," Carolyn says. "Spouses and boyfriends are sometimes the last to know."

"Tell me about it," Alex sighs.

Bobby's hands wake and grope across paper, as though the impetus of thought demands more outlet than the stumbling voice. "It challenged his sense of self," he says, not attending. "His emotional attachments are to his identity as a cop. The job is more important to him than his personal relationships. That's probably-- that might be why he's never married; why it was so easy for him to treat her like a witness or a suspect."

"Born blue," Alex contributes from her holding pattern. "Old-school. Walked a beat while he was still in diapers."

"He's a cop's cop," Bobby says. His gaze tracks through distant horizons and finds its way back to Carolyn. His sudden chuckle is rich and boyishly pleased. "Like saying someone's a man's man. He's a cop's cop."

"I'll call Webster's today," Alex tells him gravely.

Bobby's smile fades away, leaving him solemn again. "He knows how people work," he says. "You and-- you could do well with him."

It is a fine distinction, between the _how_ and the _why_. Motive is a concern for juries and lawyers; cops are interested in the how, the when, and the where. The _why_ comes later. Unless one is Bobby Goren. Unless one is Carolyn Barek. "You could be a good team," Alex seconds, unwittingly echoing Deakins' earlier words. "You're a lot alike, in some ways."

Bobby looks puzzled. Carolyn is conscious of a swift stab of surprise. "Alike?" he asks, at the same time she asks, "Who?" but Alex is back on the phone again, voice flattening into a false amiability. "--_Yes_, I'm still holding. No, this is _Detective Eames_--"

"Van Buren," Bobby says suddenly. "At the two-seven. She used to be Logan's lieutenant. Do you remember--" he directs towards Alex, and is thwarted by the phone. Impatience skids across his face, an abstract jealousy at the demand on his partner's attention. "The Captain said she tried to get him back three times."

"Deakins asked you for your opinion," Carolyn says, and regards Bobby thoughtfully.

He folds his arms on the desk and hunches his shoulders over them, his body language sheepish, his expression anything but. "Mike could be good," he says. "He'll close cases." Carolyn registers the transition from last name to first name with interest. The other detective gropes for words. "I could work with him again," he concludes at last.

Whatever Bobby's flaws -- his interpersonal skills and often fractious relationship with other detectives -- his recommendation and Alex's, based on their solve record, carry a weight with the Captain of which few others in the squad can boast. The competition for Major Case is significant, and there are far less tarnished jackets than Logan's in queue for consideration. More than a few detectives have made their way into the squad through a buddy system notorious for its associative nepotism.

It occurs to Carolyn that to hopscotch that waiting list will win Logan no friends, if he had any to begin with. The risk to Deakins is not insignificant either; he cannot afford for this new prodigy of his to fail. There will be hackles rising in the higher ranks, if favored contenders are supplanted by the NYPD's black sheep.

"The brass won't like it," she says.

Impatience creases Bobby's face again. "Politics," he says. "What do they want? We can write them a sympathy card."

Then again, there's more than one black sheep in Major Case.

The clatter of the telephone draws their attention back. Alex drops the handset back onto its cradle with a vengeful slap. "They'll fax us," she tells Bobby, annoyance battling satisfaction in her face. "You _owe_ me."

He raises his hands in acknowledgment, playing the submissive to Alex's glare. "Did they have anything?"

"I have an address," his partner answers, and pushes back to stand. "Feel like going for a ride?" Carolyn straightens while Bobby rises, that massive frame eager to be moving again in pursuit of the next lead.

"You should go for it," Alex tells her, while Bobby slides into his coat. "Logan's aggressive, but he's a good cop."

Carolyn pauses. "Did you like him?" she asks.

Alex shrugs. "He wasn't all that interested in being liked, but he had his moments. Sure. Why not?"

Bobby says nothing. Carolyn looks at him, and considers. "I'll think about it," she says at last in a noncommittal reply.

His eyes glint; he recognizes the evasion. One broad palm lifts in farewell, and then they're gone.

The thought of Logan haunts her the rest of the day and for much of the following week, a ghost that lurks just behind her shoulder. She is too used to working alone; the idea of having a partner again is a burden in itself: always distracting, sometimes irritating, occasionally intriguing. Prowling a crime scene that eventually proves to be more "scene" than "crime," she organizes her thoughts and finds them bumping into the obstacle of another personality. Still voiceless, still ill-formed, it sends her speculations spinning into new paths and crowds her in her solitude.

She is too used to working alone. The thought of surrendering that liberty is a lead weight in the pit of her stomach, but the nostalgia of it, of having a _partner_ with all it entails -- the intimacy, the challenge, the foil, the ally -- is seductive. Deakins does not press her, but from time to time he glances at her in the middle of a conversation. Eyebrows lift. _You decided yet?_ Her silence replies, _I'm still thinking,_ and the moment passes until the next questioning look.

The shifts reel by in an uneven string, lagging in some places, racing in others. She loses the count of days and wraps herself in solitude.

And then one day, Logan is simply there.

He crosses her path outside the elevator and is gone before she can recognize him, another body moving across the periphery of distraction. There is no blaze of hostility this time: no restless prickle of temper strung too tight. Her memory hiccups after him too late for use. _Oh,_ it hums. _Him--_ and then the point is moot.

It treads on her heels, the knowledge that he is there, sharing the same squad room. Decision dogs her. She dodges Deakins and spends her shifts on the field, buying time in a flurry of activity, concealing indecision with the demands of work. Slight of hand. The Captain's glance is knowing, but she is too swift for him to pin down. Eventually, he will catch her; for now, she is still unfettered.

Except that she feels increasingly stifled. Being at liberty, she reflects, is not the same as freedom. At some point, the choice itself has turned into the burden.

"You can't avoid Deakins forever," Alex says, when they intersect at the deli.

"It isn't for forever."

"How long're you planning on dodging him, then?"

She does not have an answer.

"Logan helped out with this Chapel case," Alex says. "He's got a way with crackheads. Did you hear Nicole Wallace is back?" Her forehead knits with anxiety.

Carolyn watches her and thinks about the bond between partners. "I'll talk to Deakins," she says. She doesn't allow herself to say, _Eventually._

"When?"

"Soon."

"When's that?"

Her lips twitch at the persistence; she almost smiles despite herself. "Today," she says, and feels relief uncurl in her chest. "I'll talk to him today."

Alex's eyebrows rise. "What'll you say?"

She doesn't have an answer for that, either.

Once she has made up her mind, it is ridiculously easy to act on it, sloughing off the unease hanging over her with a fatalistic certainty. What her decision will be, she still does not know, but it is enough to know she has set herself a deadline. She claims her desk and remains there, miming a fascination with paperwork that it does not deserve. The muscles in her neck and shoulders ache. She has to force them to relax. An errant thought makes her wonder if arranged marriages inspire such discomfort in the participants.

The Captain's eye is sharp, and he knows his floor. She is less than ten minutes back before he prowls out to find her. "Finally done being invisible?" he greets.

"Captain?"

He dismisses her pretense of ignorance with a look that says he knows better. "Come meet Logan," he says, dressing an order in the clothes of a suggestion. "Unless you feel like making another run for it."

They find him hidden behind a pillar, housed at a desk too small for his body. He dwarfs it, emphasizing its impermanence with his solidity, though his loose-limbed sprawl behind it is tentative, as though he afraid to break something by moving too abruptly. The suit is cheap; the tie, regrettable. He is the image of a blue collar man in a white collar get-up, hoi polloi set loose in a china shop.

He glances up as they approach. She remembers the hook nose, the deficit of too many late nights dragging at the face, the thick brows and the silver in the dark hair. That his eyes are green is a new discovery, as is the deep-seated reserve that makes them watchful.

There is something familiar about the closed quality of his expression. _You're a lot alike in some ways,_ Alex said.

"Captain," he says. His voice is low and rough. Cautious.

"Logan," Deakins says. "Meet Carolyn Barek. Barek, Mike Logan. He just transferred over last week. Not that you'd know anything about that," he adds dryly, "seeing as how you've been so busy lately."

"Pleased to meet you," she says politely, and offers her his hand. He rises to take it; he's a good head taller than her. She remembers that, too. "I've heard a lot about you."

Something complicated moves across his face; his eyes tighten in the reflection of a flinch. "I'll bet you have," he says. His self-mockery is a lazy thing, an afterthought thrown across awareness of his own reputation. The broad frame is a little stooped, a little lackadaisical, as though it is an old suit he has grown comfortable inhabiting -- and then he straightens, and it becomes something else.

For a moment, she sees confidence, bedrock-sure and bordering on arrogance, and then it's gone. She regards him with interest. He's not quite what he seems.

"From Goren and Eames," she clarifies.

"Sure you did."

"I'll let you two get acquainted," Deakins says, and melts away to leave them there, measuring each other.

Logan's body language is not hostile, but neither is it welcoming. Alex's voice snipes in Carolyn's memory, and she is amused a little, remembering.

"Something funny?" he asks.

"Alex -- Detective Eames -- said you weren't interested in being liked," she says, truthfully enough. She leans into the pillar that is his view of the office.

The directness of it surprises a small gleam of appreciation. His face relaxes; the corners of his mouth hint at a curve. "Depends on the situation," he says. Though the words are defensive, the voice is not. "I'm the new guy. Want me to make nice?"

"It's your choice," she says. "I don't have a preference."

"This where you tell me to just be myself?"

She considers him thoughtfully. If he is playing a role, he plays it well. There is no seam between act and action to betray falsehood. "This isn't a first date," she says mildly. "You don't need to impress me."

"Yeah?" There's an edge of cynicism to the reply.

"Really," she says. "You impressed the Captain and Alex and Bobby."

"And impressing you would be, what. Icing on the cake? Or are you saying you have higher standards?"

She hesitates. "It's not necessary," she says. "I usually trust their opinion."

"Yeah?" And now it is a dry mockery instead. "How's that been working out for you?"

There is no malice in it, but she wonders nonetheless, recognizing an elusive something that flutters just beyond her grasp. Something in his behavior niggles at her forebrain. "They recommend you," she says.

"But you've heard rumors." His mouth curves into a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "I'd tell you not to believe everything you hear, but that goes both ways. Tell me when you figure it out."

There's tension in that slouching frame, the flex of a body bracing itself against the next blow. She considers the rough grace of him, the deceptively casual stance that suggests a man at rest, and is reminded just how far he's fallen in his time, and how abrupt and how high his latest ascent has been. It would be an unsettling change for even the most mellow of men.

Logan is not a mellow man.

The masculinity she remembers from before is still present, though it is more subdued than she recalls, requiring recognition without demanding acknowledgment. Of more interest is the cynical intelligence: the hints of a challenge biding its time, the glimpse of scars covered by canniness. Logan is an old hand; he will pick and choose his battles.

She wonders what they will be. He is a walking promise of trouble in the future; he breathes its potential into the air around him.

Curiosity itches. She discovers that she wants to know what it will look like when it comes.

The deep voice breaks into her thoughts. "Hey. You want me to turn around for you?" he asks cordially. His finger sketches the twirl of a circle. "That way you can get the whole 360."

She realizes belatedly that she has been staring at him; that silence has fallen and ripped, stretched too long. "I'm sorry," she says.

"It'd be no trouble," he says. "You want to see me walk, too?"

"I was thinking."

"I've heard of that," he says, still affable. "You don't think and drive, do you?"

It's evident why Alex likes him. "About a profile," she says with dignity.

"You're not big on smiling."

"I smile."

"Just not at work?"

"I smile," she repeats, and regards him, face grave. "I'm smiling now."

His eyebrows rise. "Looks good on you," he congratulates, deadpan. "Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

"What has the Captain had you working on?" she asks, changing the subject.

He shrugs. "Reading old cases," he says. "Monitoring interrogations. Phone calls, pulling LUDs, babysitting perps -- busywork." He shrugs again. "The usual."

His voice is neutral, but the boredom is plain for her to see, if she looks. He chafes at inactivity and the lack of challenge. "Alex said you helped out with Nicole Wallace," she says.

"Goren's girlfriend." A certain masculine approval crosses his face.

"She's a repeat offender."

"I heard. Busy girl."

"Three murders when they first met," she says. "There've been fifteen more since then."

He whistles in professional appreciation. "Something about anthrax too, wasn't there?"

"She keeps Bobby occupied," she allows, glancing across her shoulder at the empty desks.

"Everybody needs a hobby," Logan says in the same tone of voice. "Who knew Moriarty'd look good in a bra?"

She meets the gleam of green eyes and finds an amusement in them that challenges her own. She refuses to allow herself to smile.

It is a close thing.

Deakins is back. "Getting along?" he asks.

Logan shrugs. "Fine," he says, even as she says, "Just fine."

The Captain glances between them, looks surprised, then looks thoughtful. His eyebrow lifts. _Decided yet?_

Her mouth curls. _I'll try it,_ she answers in silence and is surprised by a quickening of interest. A breath of change. Something long dormant inside wakes and stretches.

"Good," Deakins says, "I'm partnering you up. She can get you settled in. Show you the ropes. Get you used to how we do things around here. You can start here." He passes Carolyn a post-it. She glances at it; the handwriting is lamentable, but it is good enough. "Jewelry store got hit. You got one DB and Homicide's on the scene. Barek's primary. Now go do some police work."

Something comes alight in Logan's face, something intent and hungry. His gaze swings to her and smiles; she is abruptly warmed by an unexpected charm.

Not interested in being liked. But interested in being a cop.

"You drive," she says.


End file.
